Is Zoox—And Its Autonomous Car—For Real?

This is what the mysterious website Zoox.co promises. And according to the scant amount of information on the single-page site pictured above, that new class of animal is a fully autonomous electric car (level 4, by NHTSA classification)
to be unveiled at the L.A. Auto Show and Connected Car Expo this coming November. Considering no carmaker or outside company has developed a true fully autonomous vehicle yet, that's big news! But just one question: Who—or more importantly, what—is Zoox?

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The company's name is sprinkled in with major auto-tech players in the Connected Car Expo's press release, but after a quick search, I didn't turn up any related sites or stories. The domain .co belongs to the country of Columbia, but pretty much anyone can buy a .co domain nowadays. So that's not much help. The only signs of life on Twitter come from a few tweets and retweets linking to the website from small driverless car blogs.

Funny thing about one of those blogs: Driverless Car HQ is a site dedicated to all stories pertaining to autonomous car developments. One of the people affiliated with this site is Paul Godsmark. According to his profile on LinkedIn, Godsmark is quite the authority on transport and driverless cars. In addition to being a prolific commenter and poster on the subreddit /r/SelfDrivingCars, Godsmark also runs his own blog and helps put together the AV Update newsletter. (All of which I'll be keeping tabs on now.) It was Godsmark that first posted the link to Zoox.co to Reddit, and despite fellow Redditors asking for more information, he keeps repeating one sentence from Zoox.co: "We will be under the radar until then."

Curious if Godsmark was somehow affiliated with the company, I sent him a
quick message on LinkedIn. He got back to me, and although he does not work with or at Zoox, he said he sent along my inquiry for more information to someone that could help. He told me not to expect to hear from them, and I don't. "We will be under the radar until then."

One possible lead has popped up in the Reddit thread. Redditor e4e6 ran a trademark search for the company and discovered that it is listed as an automotive parts company called ZOOX PTY. LTD. based in Melbourne, Australia. As e4e6 rightfully notes, "Weirdly, they registered the word Yolo back in June." I don't know if that's important, but it's funny. Anyway, according to e4e6, the brick-and-mortar address is for a video studio called Crayon. Oddly enough, if you look at the Google Maps Street View image for this address, the building has the name of one of Crayon's brother sites, XYZ Studios. Neither of the sites, though, have any information on Zoox. (Update: Interestingly, it turns out XYZ has done some previous animation work for Honda's Earth Dreams Technology. I've contacted XYZ to see if it has any relationship with Zoox and am waiting for a response.) At the moment, I'm not sure what to make of this connection, if it even is one.

Before contacting Godsmark, I also sent a note to JMPR, which is the public relations company that is handling the Connected Car Expo and responsible for the original press release. They sounded about as surprised as I was after first seeing the website. After a little digging, this is what JMPR could divulge:

"Zoox is an Australian start-up launching in 2014 with the aim to be on the road in 2021. Zoox's vision is to be an autonomous electric vehicle company that fundamentally solves the issues facing urban mobility: congestion, pollution, safety & lifestyle.

Zoox's vehicles are not owned, you order them on demand. This means when you're not using it others are, which is great for maximizing resources used.You are also freed from the anxiety of car ownership, parking, insurance, recharging, and owning a product that sits idle most of its life. There will be different models for different needs, the model being unveiled at the LA Auto Show is aimed at global business travelers who value privacy.

Just as the car once transformed the carriage, Zoox will transform the automobile into what we call an 'auto' - a fully autonomous electric vehicle. Zoox's DNA is built on a revolutionary vehicle design that is symmetrical and bi-directional: it can cross the road to pick you up without a 3 point turn, or drive easily in and out of your driveway, enhancing mobility."

Despite this statement being pretty boilerplate, at least we have a bit more information now. We know the company is indeed based in Australia, so the connection to the design studios has a little more weight to it. But it's still nothing solid. Maybe one of them helped come up with the renderings for this site or whatever will be unveiled in L.A.? Hard to tell.

Now for the red flags. First off, no one knows anything about this start-up and it already has a car to show off? If so, this smells likes vaporware at best.

As for the car pictured above: If this rendering is actually the model Zoox plans to show off, two things seem out of place: A true fully autonomous car doesn't need to be designed like a modern vehicle. This car, despite looking like something from Tron, still seems a little too conventional. And if Zoox's claim about it being bi-directional is true, the design teaser is even more confusing. That sure doesn't look like a car meant to move in two directions. Not to mention, do they really think we will have bi-directional roads by 2021?

That brings me to another thing that feels off about all of this. The mission statement is not only vague—it doesn't seem based in reality. Oh, yes, we're just going to start up an electric autonomous car-sharing company that will solve all of the world's congestion, pollution, safety, and lifestyle problems. Ask Elon Musk how just the first part of that is working out. It's not exactly easy.

Car-sharing will become increasingly prevalent in the future—especially in urban areas and with the eventual introduction of fully autonomous cars—so that paradigm makes sense. But there are a lot of infrastructural changes that need to happen for fully autonomous car-sharing on any mass scale. Throw in the fact that this car is suppose to be an EV and everything gets even more complicated.

Oh, and what exactly does a vehicle made for a "global business travelers who value privacy" look like? Apparently this is it.

So after all of this, what do we know? Well, not much, but at least a little more than we did before. If the company does have a concept car, it's a very, very long way from hitting public roads. But hey, we're fans of innovation here at PM, so we'd be more than happy if, on November 19, Zoox rolled something out on four bi-directional wheels. More than likely, though, Zoox will just let us know it exists—and then we'll never hear from it again.